Wednesday, 16 November 2016

“ I am invisible,
understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you
see sometimes in a circus sideshow, it is as though I have been surrounded by
mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings,
themselves, or figments of their imagination- indeed, everything and anything
except me.”

The above was inspired by
Susan’s prompt of Invisibility at Poets United.
Cheers Susan!

The last two stanzas are
accurate to a situation my family found ourselves in many many moons ago. Until I wrote the poem and perhaps of being
now (and for a long time) relatively ‘comfortable,’ I had forgotten about it
and I am ashamed of myself.

I can remember pretending
not to be in when the milkman called for his money each Friday night. I can
remember handing over the last money in my purse to the insurance man as I was
too embarrassed to say I couldn’t afford it.
I can remember borrowing the bus fare for my son to go school from my
next-door neighbour because I couldn’t even scrape that together. I only did this once, so mortified I was. I can remember the fear of the postman
dropping debt letters through the letter box.
I can remember the bailiff calling, him finding there was nothing of
value to take away to solve the debts.

I remember most the two
slices of bread. My hubs and children
had had the last of cereals for their breakfast and I knew there was two slices
of bread left in the breadbin, so looking forward to toast I was. When I pulled them out of the packet, they
were turning green with mould. I had
never felt such helplessness such despair such utter disappointment in my life and haven’t since.

Kerry
at Real Toads has us writing micro poetry following the theme of “This is not
what we came to see…”

The
words are of how difficult my sons find it to visit their dad. A particular son, whose dad was his hero, is visibly shaken to the
point he is robbed of speech on the
occasions he visits his dad, his grief his loss is palpable. He is slowly backing away as this is the only
way he can cope.

I
understand this as when my mum was robbed of her identity by that that is
dementia, I found it very difficult to love this stranger who inhabited my mothers body and eventually
didn’t…

The above
is based on a dream I recently had, a dream that remained quite vivid long
after I had woken. The dream took its
location in the first floor flat we lived in, our first home after marriage. As bits of the dream began to disappear from
my memory, I wrote what I could remember down.
Brandy wasn’t part of it, the shoelace twixt books and an old gramophone,
but I couldn’t get the gramophone to ‘fit’ into the poem, so brandy it became.

I love
dreams, thinking them more entertaining than television, and if dreams do have
a meaning, a subconscious message, I don’t understand mine at all.

Freud believed
that our dreams are a window into our subconscious and reveal our unconscious
desires, thoughts and motivations. He
believed they are a way for us to satisfy our urges and desires that are
unacceptable to society.

Some of
the dreams I have are quite startling and if Freud is right, I think I need
sectioning…

Kerry at Real Toads has us writing micro poetry under the theme of Death
and Night. Cheers Kerry!

I really should be in bed right now having worked through the night, but
words kept whizzing around my head and became more important than sleep. And above they are. But I shall go to bed soon after visiting (a few) others – but will visit all across the next few days. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Björn’s
Tuesday prompt at dVerse is that of: War for peace – or just hard work? He requested we use any form or trick to
make us long for peace and not just hate war.
Although it is true I yearn for this world of ours to exist in a
permanent state of peace, I cannot see it happening, ever, as mankind is as he
is, is a predator, his prey being power and possessions. There are some of us that walk softly on this
Earth leaving our gentle footprints and oh so many others who churn up this
Earth in unimaginable savagery and greed.

War
is the hallmark of our history since the very beginning, the very beginning when
we dragged ourselves from the primordial soup, and so it continues. Look around our world today, the barbarity
that exists within it and how we seek (to some degree) to ignore it; let it be
some others problem as we hang on to the tiny space we have defined as ours. Please read this article on War and Peace in
which it notes that there have been some 250 major wars since the end of WW2.

On
the same Tuesday night I viewed Meet the Psychopaths, part of which detailed the work of American psychiatrist
Hervey M. Cleckley in which he noted that some WW1 veterans had mental health
problems that would not respond to treatment, and further checking showed these
soldiers carried a history of poor conduct, that of antisocial behaviour. Later work in a general hospital setting, he
came across individuals who showed the same personality traits, the same
disturbed behaviour he had seen in the soldiers earlier. From his observations he came up with 21 traits that to him, defined the label of psychopath and in 1941 his book The Mask of Sanity was publishedwhich brought the term psychopath into
popular use.

Estimate
prevalence of psychopathy is that of 1 in 100-150 of us and we are what we
are. Of course not all psychopaths are
of the axe-wielding variety, but look around our world today and you will
recognise those who probably are, recognise them by their absolute barbarity
and the pleasure and power they achieve from it.

And
so it is that evolution has little lifted us little from our primitive mindset
and we will continue to battle until we wipe ourselves out. Sad, but I think true.

I
think it important to state that despite the misery above, I am a very happy
optimistic soul, this state being due to the ability to dampen and maybe hide
the realist in me. Peace!

Trees - carbon sequesters and oxygen givers - just love them!

Welcome to my blog.

where I waffle on about anything and everything. Lots of poetry stuff where I often endevour to spread the word that those experiencing mental ill-health are human too. Also the occasional post dealing with health and all that surrounds it - especially that of the slow death of the NHS as it moves towards privatisation - and then God help us all...

Disclaimer: We may, at times mention what appears to be a real person - as an example to give credence to a point made. Please be aware that this person does not exist; (s)he will be a composite of many people we know or have known.